


Gnosis

by iimpavid



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Dissociation, Gen, Hive Mind, Kaiju, Mind Manipulation, Torture, it's only stucky if you squint, the jaeger pilot au no one asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 06:02:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12624789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid
Summary: When you get right down to brass tacks and trace everything back to it’s roots, everything that happens between a hole in the universe appearing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and Bucky Barnes losing his arm to a fucking kaiju is Steve’s fault.





	Gnosis

When you get right down to brass tacks and trace everything back to it’s roots, everything that happens between a hole in the universe appearing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and Bucky Barnes losing his arm to a fucking kaiju is Steve’s fault. This isn’t something Bucky’s angry about— he’s alive therefore it’s a good goddamn day— it’s just fact.

 

“Steve, you’re gonna get eaten by an alien monster—an alien monster with teeth the size of tanks and fuckin’ tentacles— what’m I gonna tell your mom, then, huh? Do you got any idea what she’ll do to me?”

 

This does nothing to dissuade Steve from going West like some kind of rage-filled, sickly pioneer to stand in line for hours on end and see if he qualifies for the Jaeger program.

 

“Alright, okay, fine, but I’m coming with you though so you don’t die of dysentery on the Oregon Fuckin’ Trail.” Bucky’s got his fingers crossed the whole time that it’s like the Army and Steve will at least get to go home to Brooklyn, on the Atlantic, 2,500 miles away. Home safe with Sarah and keeping an eye on the Barneses because now that he’s out here Bucky’s pretty sure he’s stuck. He’s got a lot riding on Steve’s bad lungs and scoliosis.

 

Except the Pan Pacific Defense Corps is nothing like the Army. They take Bucky. They take Steve. They take anyone who scores above a 32 on some kind of test that looks like it’s out of the FBI’s LSD-fueled explorations into ESP. (Bucky scores 50/50 every time– what, like it’s hard?) Hook them up like a couple of lab rats to make them mind meld with each other then with a robot the size of the Empire State Building.

 

Bucky and Steve and their Giant Freakin’ Robot (Romeo Blue is it’s official name but it takes Bucky a while to get comfortable with that) spend the next two years kicking ass off the coast of Mexico and Southern California. 

 

They rack up kills like so many points in pinball. It’s the most physically demanding VR game on the market, if you think about it, considering that every blow Romeo takes gets mirrored on the pilots in electrical burns and impossible muscle damage. But 10 out of 10 real-world drops and they’re still going strong. Bucky’s got tattoos for every kaiju; a neat line of monster skulls from the crook of his elbow down toward his wrist.

 

Then, Tyranny makes landfall in Acapulco.

 

They’ve been asleep no more than an hour and wake up, in unison, just before the alarm sounds.

 

“I hope they finished Romeo’s new paint job— he’s gotta date!”

 

Bucky pours himself, half-conscious, from his bunk and into a kevlar-lined jumpsuit that’s supposed to, somehow, keep him from dying if their Jaeger goes down. Steve is already dressed, heading for the door.

 

Over the intercom the Shatterdome’s AI informs them, cool as ever, “Red alert. Kaiju northbound 90 miles. Category: unknown. Codename: Tyranny.”

 

“You really gotta raise your standards, Rogers, if a kaiju’s your idea of a date.”

 

Hardship makes landfall dragging the severed torso of Romeo Blue behind it, using the remains of the Jaeger as a bludgeoning tool. Apparently kaiju are smart enough to use tools.

 

The news reports, relieved and horrified in turns, that Steve Rogers washes up 50 miles south resembling a dead rat more than a human being, in critical condition, but alive.

 

Bucky Barnes’ corpse is not recovered.

**

 

_There’s no need for an arm when he has many bodies, many minds, all working in tandem to grow, spread, improve, consume—_

 

He drowns screaming Steve’s name. Coughs up sea water and blood, body so cold it burns. Then there are hands to hold him still, press needles into his veins and relentless calm.

 

_—one lost limb means nothing to the eternal Knowing enveloping him every breath seeing through a dozen sets of eyes—_ **  
**

 

It’s some H.P. Lovecraft shit, what they have him hooked up to. Strobing red light. Sirens in the distance. But not quite the distance, they should be coming from overhead but they sound miles away. Bucky blinks and that alone triggers a wave of vertigo.

 

_— Single consciousness is a cold, distant memory and he can’t remember how he ever wanted to be so alone. That kind of singularity would be tantamount to death—_

 

There aren’t even emergency lights on in the laboratory. There’s been a power outage.

 

An IV hangs above him and he reaches to pull the catheter from his right arm — only to come up about an arm’s length short. His left arm is gone from the shoulder down.

 

His head drops against the hard headrest of the chair he’s sitting in. That, he can hear.

 

_— They are all so small, the vermin skittering over the landscape in blind, confused terror. They cannot comprehend anything outside of their own need to feed and multiply and it is a mercy to crush them; it takes dozens at once to feel anything but stepping down on asphalt—_

 

Reeling, he braces himself and yanks against the leather strap holding his arm to the chair until the metal holding it in place gives. Tugs the IV, tape and all, out from between two kaiju head tattoos with his teeth. It’s disgusting, unsanitary, and medically-inadvisable (he hopes Sarah Rogers is alive somewhere to be irrationally upset with him).

 

_— There is Another here whose eyes he can see through—_

 

Fingers clumsy and half-numb he works himself out of the straps, concludes that he’s been held here (wherever here is) against his will, but there’s no one to stop him leaving now.

 

What he wouldn’t give for a decent pair of boots.

 

_— The Other is small but not unaware. It should be Known. It should be consumed—_

 

Bucky shakes his head, falls onto his hands and knees beside the exam chair. His life has become a scifi B-movie and he would be pissed about it except he’s no longer attached to a Pons. The kaiju— a small one, the size of maybe a clydesdale, still a fetus if kaiju fetuses look anything like earth fetuses— in the tank beside the chair floats, dazed, and distantly Bucky wonders if it’s as angry as he is.

 

The room rumbles, shudders. From far off but getting closer he hears concrete and rebar breaking.

 

Barefoot on tile he breaks for the exit. Passes the corpses of more than a few people who have killed themselves in the maze and stops suddenly to scrutinize the building’s directory. The dissonance of the presence of a directory in a place where, he’s sure, he’s been experimented on is a problem for Future Bucky. Present Bucky has to figure out how to get out of dodge before the kaiju that he knows in his blood is coming for him, finds him.

 

Outside he recognizes the ruins of Monterey from news footage back in 2013. The street is shattered porcelain. There are no signs of life except for the sensation of being watched and the roaring in the distance that draws closer with every shudder of the earth.

 

It finds him before he can run more than a mile in his pale blue scrubs and bare, blistered feet. Comes up on his left like a hyper-competitive jogging partner. Its head is horned, like a bull’s, it’s jaws inexplicably beak-like. Each of its eight blue eyes stare down at Bucky with keen understanding. That’ll teach him to run on asphalt in the middle of a California summer. As if he could have outrun it in the first place.

 

“Oh fuck me,” he breathes, stumbling, half hysterical, “no, nope, fuck off man. I don’t have time for this.” Bucky scrambles away as fast as he can manage on three limbs, desperate to get his back to a wall and put distance between himself and the monster.

 

The kaiju shifts its weight, bringing a leg straight through a building so it can lean down over him. It has found the Other and wonders, detached but still present, why this is so disappointing.

 

Bucky freezes. Under the staccato rhythm of his heart trying to beat straight out of his chest he hears another set of beats, two in tandem and offset from each other. Feels himself inhale through a membraneous filter because _the air of this world is not the right composition just yet. Not yet. But by the time the vermin have been removed it will be_.

 

“You— you wouldn’t have this problem if you went back home, y’know,” he points out. He isn’t sure if he says it out loud but he sees the acknowledgement, the confusion, in the kaiju’s eyes. Or, the three eyes closest to him. It’s pupils constrict into tight diamonds and it’s like an icepick being driven into the front of his skull.

 

Bucky gasps, screams, because the pain isn’t letting up and all he can smell is burnt toast. But, absurdly, he thinks that it’s listening to him. The slab of pavement he’s lying on shifts.

 

“Just, turn around and go home, it’s not hard. It’s all polluted and breathable there and you don’t have to work so hard—” he’s half aware of what’s coming out of his mouth. He spits out a mouthful of blood, looks up in time to see the kaiju draw back from him again.

 

It might be a trick of the light but it turns, he sees its flank, back toward the setting sun, toward the sea. Nausea swells through him in a wave. Home. It would be great to go home again.

 

Then he hears the whine of jet engines. Useless gunfire sparks across the kaiju’s back—

 

He was so close. He was going to go home, to leave– and that is his last thought before the seizure drags him under.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr.](https://papermoon-cardboardsea.tumblr.com/) [Twitter.](https://twitter.com/iimpavid)


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